He nodded, well pleased that I’d asked for such things, and left me, slipping out of sight behind the tapestry. I checked on the Fool and found him deeply asleep still. I hovered my hand over his face, loath to touch him lest I rouse him but worried that my efforts might have woken a higher fever in him. Instead, he seemed cooler and his breathing deeper. I straightened, yawned tremendously, and then made the error of stretching.

I muffled my yelp of pain. I stood still for a long moment, then carefully rolled my shoulders. I hadn’t imagined it. I reached behind myself and gingerly tugged my shirt free of where it had adhered to my back. Then I found Chade’s mirror. What I saw confounded me.

The oozing wounds on my back were far smaller than those on the Fool’s; nor were they puffed and reddened with infection. Instead they gaped, seven small injuries as if someone had repeatedly stabbed me with a dagger. They had not bled much; I judged them shallow. And given my propensity to heal quickly, they might very well be gone by the end of tomorrow.

The conclusion I had to reach was obvious. In Skill-healing the Fool’s wounds, I had taken on these small twins. A sudden memory stirred, and I examined my belly. There, just where I had closed the wounds my knife had made on the Fool’s body, was a series of reddened dents. I prodded one and winced. Not painful but tender. My whirling thoughts offered me a dozen explanations. In sharing strength with the Fool, had I actually shared flesh with him? Were his wounds closing because mine were opened? I draped my shirt around me, added wood to the fire, gathered my buttony jacket, and scuffed down the dusty steps to my old bedchamber. I hoped I would find some answers in the scrolls that Chade had promised me. Until I did, I would keep this small mishap to myself. I had no desire to participate in the experiments that Chade would doubtless envision if he knew of this.

I shut the door and it became undetectable. A peek out of my shuttered window told me that a winter dawn was not far away. Well, I would take what sleep I could still get and be grateful. I added a log to the dying fire on my hearth, draped my ruined finery on a chair, found Lord Feldspar’s sensible woolen nightshirt, and sought my boyhood bed. My drowsy eyes wandered the familiar walls. There was the wandering crack in the wall that had always reminded me of a bear’s snout. I had made that gouge in the ceiling, practicing a fancy move with a hand axe that had flown out of my grip. The tapestry of King Wisdom treating with the Elderlings had been replaced with one of two bucks in battle. I preferred it. I drew a deep breath and settled into the bed. Home. Despite all the years, this was home, and I sank into sleep surrounded by the stout walls of Buckkeep Castle.

Chapter Five

An Exchange of Substance

I am curled warm and snug in the den. Safe. I am tired and if I shift too much, I feel the marks of teeth on my neck and back. But if I am still, then all is well.

In the distance, a wolf is hunting. He hunts alone. It is a terrible sound he makes, desperate and breathless. It is not the full-throated howling of a wolf that calls to his pack. It is the desperate yipping and short breathless howls of a predator who knows his prey is escaping. He would be better to hunt silently, to save his failing strength for running instead of giving tongue.

He is so far away. I curl tighter in the warmth of my den. It is safe here and I am well fed. I feel a fading sympathy for a wolf with no pack. I hear the broken yipping again and I know how the cold air rushes down his dry throat, how he leaps through deep snow, extending his full body, literally flinging himself through the night. I remember it too well, and for an aching moment, I am him.

“Brother, brother, come, run, hunt,” he beseeches me. He is too distant for me to know more of his thought than this.

But I am warm, and weary, and well fed. I sink deeper into sleep.

I woke from that dream a lifetime away from the last time I had hunted with the wolf. I lay still, troubled and feeling the fading threat of it. What had woken me? What needed to be hunted? And then I became aware of the smell of hot food, bacon and meal-cakes and the reviving fragrance of tea. I twitched fully awake and sat up. The sound that woke me had been the closing of my door. Ash had entered, set down a tray, stirred up my fire and fed it, taken my soiled shirt, and done it all so silently that I had slept through it. A shudder of dread ran over me. When had I become so complacent and senseless as to sleep through intruders in the room? That was an edge I could ill afford to lose.

I sat up, winced, and then reached behind me to touch my back. The wounds were closing and had stuck to the mildly itchy wool. I braced myself and plucked the nightshirt free of them, all while berating myself for sleeping too soundly. Ah. Too much to eat, too much to drink, and the exhaustion of a Skill-healing. I decided I could excuse my lack of wariness on those grounds. It did not totally banish the chagrin I felt. I wondered if Ash would report my lapse to Chade, if he would praise the lad, and if perhaps they would laugh about it.